Transparencies (2019)
Tina Konec only graduated in 2015, yet her artistic expression has already become masterful and her drawings are incisive, as if she has achieved a long creative mileage. Nature, more precisely trees, specifically coniferous trees, inspire her work. She lays the pencil or black ink strokes next to one another on paper or tracing paper. Sometimes, she covers the drawing on the tracing paper with another drawing, which leads to disappearing or blurry images.
By employing incredibly simple visual means, Tina Konec creates exceptionally complex works, distinguished by both sensitivity and extraordinary presence. Although inspired by the oldest possible source—nature, her drawings are entirely contemporary. The artist does not imitate nature literally, but condenses her “tree crowns” in a relaxed and intuitive way and dissolves them into a finely felt rhythm. Occasionally, there is the experience of the essence of Eastern art in the way she places the drawing onto a blank piece of paper, in apparent simplicity, in a highly condensed expressive and poetic nature. The drawings direct the viewer’s attention to the tree crowns and the sky, as if an open door leads to an inconceivable infinity. We glimpse through dense dark landscapes and isolated small shoots, we encounter peace and perfection everywhere. Everything is in place. Simple, natural and perfect.
Curator Andreja Borin
Fractal Horizons (2018)
The artist’s thought process resembles a flow of dream images, its sensory and cognitive experience evolving throughout the art process. Although the things and their states around us are always changing, Tina Konec manages to grasp the fleeting motions and etheric moments in unique artistic forms. These moments are hard to record, submit to technique and materialize. All that would be impossible without artistic will and precise technique from which her art stems. The artist’s visual language reveals the authenticity of the moment, with the kind of perception and understanding that borders on scientific observation.
The works of Tina Konec can be divided into thematic series. All works are done with ink and/ or graphite on white or black paper. Her paintings/drawings are constructed with gradual layering, drawing the lines of the canopies, stroking out the branches and trunks. The choice of surface and technique is intimate in its nature, bound between material and structural idea of the line that is willfully combined into groups, layers and shaded elements. The color of the surface is another expressive element the artist uses. Bravely refusing colors, Konec instead deploys an ascetic technique of advanced concentration to create these inspiring series. Structural elements often stretch beyond the format, acting as detailed sections or fragments of a bigger whole, showing the microcosm of the shapes within. The individual images in the sequence reveal ritual segments and present vibrating, holographic and detailed records.
Her work is distinguished primarily by her fascination with nature and complex fractal perception of the universe. The varied dominant forms and freely formed shapes, gradually structured to assume the erratic patterns of stems, branches, twigs, tree trunks and canopies, radiate a special light that fills the abstract spaces of white paper base. In this narration-free space, a sublime ethereal sound is emitted, a synesthetic effect of visual images and strokes, that seemingly causes this space to move, expand, echo and resonate with the tactility of the experience. This image sequence refrences equally to archetypical and memory symbolism. Even as the artist illustrates motives from nature, her art includes a social segment, a connection to rather personal meditative moments in which we are aware of how the light refracts over the drawn forms.
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In her practice, the author intertwines intuitive, introspective-emotional and scientific discourse. The rising and falling of organic forms merges visual art with memory and dream imagery in perfect synergy. What is offered here, is the great idea of unity of spirit and matter, of physical and spiritual integrity. Detailed drawings inspire our imagination, the ethos of constant movement, the changing and passing of things, evoking omnipresent energies. Yet the author changes the apparent universality to the fragile transience of the moment. The layering and merging of artistic elements suggest a kind of ethereal dynamics, where the spatiality of the object is surrendered to the temporariness of time. Reality is no less real in spite of increasing surrealism. Figuration is allowed, alluding to possible interpretations without forcing either the documenting or realistic aspect of it upon the viewer. So the author may form her own meaning through the artistic process and incredibly, all motives taken from nature get interpreted in a very subjective and intimate manner.
Curator Eugen Borkovsky
Translation to English: Dona Pratnekar
Gazing into the crowns of the trees, the sky, the light and the whiteness (2017)
Up and only up to the sky – all of Tina Konec’s drawings lead our gaze upwards. The role played by her depictions of tree tops is just as important as the surfaces of the drawings themselves. In recent years, she has been experimenting with dark and light surfaces. The ceiling of our consciousness and our perception of it is where infinity begins. There, everything can be found and nothing at all, and it is all indescribable.
Her imaginative work strikes a balance between black and white, with blackish and silvery strokes featuring in the middle. But everything points upwards, towards the sky and even beyond, where the whiteness of the paper takes over. The Day and Night and Night and Day series reflects the shifts that Konec creates with each of her pencil strokes on the white and dark surfaces.
Her black surface drawings feature silver graphite strokes that resemble tree tops, with some similarities and differences to their living counterparts. This is particularly noticeable on black paper, where the grey graphite lines actually turn silver, giving the feel of a photo negative.
Her pencil and ink techniques both produce shapes that are similar to tree tops, which she photographs and then uses as the foundation for new creations with thicker and fresher outlines. The harmonious combination of these outlines with strokes imi- tating branches is particularly characteristic of her very own drawing style.
Her artwork is immediately recognisable from its incredible order, balance and harmony of shapes.
Light in a way brings hope for a common perspective, the observation and perception of our world through nature.
Order, harmony and beauty are the leitmotifs of her creations. And this will always be the case.
Art historians have often predicted the collapse of fine art. But Tina Konec is breathing new life into its latest incarnation, which is based on knowledge, wisdom and an awareness of its fundamental values. She isn’t recreating the shapes you may see when looking into tree crowns. She is instead creating shapes which are similar, but are reminiscent of her perception of natural beauty so we can observe them again – but from a fresh perspective. The result are highly aesthetic works of art, created with nothing but pencils. In our new century.
Curator Miloš Bašin